by Kelly Meding
Tennyson growled, cementing my theory. I glanced at him and mouthed the word “Piotr.” He nodded.
“It is,” I said to the vampire outside. I expected seething rage, but all I felt was utter shock at seeing Piotr show up on my doorstep. Caution and curiosity nipped right at the heels of shock.
“May we have a word in private, Marshal Harrison?”
“We’re speaking aren’t we?”
“I would prefer a face-to-face chat, if you don’t mind.” He paused; I couldn’t see his face clearly to gauge his expression. “You don’t trust me.”
I couldn’t stop a snort of disbelief. “Fuck no, I don’t trust you, if you’ve done what I think you’ve done.”
“I don’t suppose it would help my case if I admitted to you that I am the necromancer you are seeking?”
Okay, first of all, suspects don’t march up to your front door and announce their crimes. Second, vampires don’t willingly admit to crimes in broad daylight, when they are physically weakest. Third . . . I didn’t have a third, just a gut-deep feeling this wasn’t as open-book as it sounded. Vampires always had ulterior motives. Always.
“The only way it helps your case, Piotr, is to guarantee I won’t kill you until you’ve answered all of my questions. Maybe I’ll even let my incubus friend have a go at you.”
Piotr laughed, high-pitched and jovial. “I admit, Marshal, this is the first time I’ve been threatened with torture-by-incubus. You Americans are so clever.”
The laughter was helping rage get a head start on curiosity.
“The gossip tree has my old friend Woodrow Tennyson at your side,” Piotr continued. “Is this rumor true?”
“Shouldn’t someone as old as you know better than to trust rumors?”
“You know my name, as well as my age and strength, which is proof enough of his assistance.”
Crap. “Look, you said you wanted to talk.”
“Face-to-face.”
Tennyson made a slashing gesture across his throat. I muted the microphone.
“Are you considering this?” he asked.
“He’s got answers I need, Tennyson, and I’m not bringing him inside the perimeter fence. Not with only the three of us here and no immediate backup.”
“What’s to stop him from breaking your neck the moment you step outside of the gate?”
“Not a blessed thing.” The certainty of the statement sent quakes of fear through my stomach. Going outside was as close to suicide as any move I’d made in my career, but I needed answers. I needed to look Piotr in the face and find out why he’d turned Julius into a revenant. I needed to know if he had any connection to the disappearing wolves and vamps. I needed to know if Julius had betrayed us.
Tennyson gazed at me, his thoughts guarded behind a stony expression. “I cannot decide if you are brave, or merely foolish and young.”
“Gee, thanks.” I cut off another remark with a slash of my hand, then unmuted the microphone. “I’ll be outside in five minutes. Don’t crisp before I get there.” I cut off the sound on the edge of Piotr’s chuckling.
The hall closet wasn’t for coats. Inside was an arsenal of weapons, both legal and illegally modified. I still had my sidearm loaded with silver-jacketed bullets. The closet offered a variety of other anti-vampire items from which to choose. Many of the basic items—cross, holy water—wouldn’t work unless the target was from a Christian faith background. Not likely, given this one was originally from Russia. So I stuck with garlic spray and plenty of silver. A silver knife went into my front hip pocket, and a thin band of silver—a flexible, herringbone weave, not unlike a bracelet—went around my neck like a choker.
Tennyson eyed my new items from a distance as I went back to K.I.M. and made a few adjustments.
“You’ll be able to listen in,” I said, finished. “This side is muted. It’s also recording, just in case.” I didn’t need to elaborate the point.
“Don’t look him in the eye.”
“I know—”
“No, you don’t.” A startling vehemence had entered his voice. “Necromancers have power over the soul, Ms. Harrison, more powerful than a simple gazelock. Don’t let him have a taste of yours.”
Eyes. Windows to the soul. Don’t look. Got it.
I tiptoed upstairs to check on my mom before I left. She’d sprawled on a bed in one of the spare rooms and fallen asleep. Her silver-streaked hair was out of its tie and fell across her face, hiding most of it from sight. Her chest rose and fell steadily. I hoped she was having good dreams. No spiders allowed in those dreams.
Tennyson was waiting at the front door. He held it open as I slipped out, and I felt his intense gaze on my back as I walked. A cool breeze blew across the yard and cul-de-sac, rustling early spring leaves and bringing the damp promise of rain. April around here felt like Seattle was reported to be—rainy, chilly, and very gray. Our streak of sunny spring days seemed on the verge of ending.
Our street was roughly a quarter-mile long, and the outer gate came into view long before I reached it. Piotr stood on the other side, a perfect, jacketed statue. I strode up to the fence, gun in my right hand, safety off.
“You wanted face-to-face,” I said. “You going to show me yours?”
He lifted the brim of his hat and tugged the scarf down, angling his body away from the sunshine. His pale skin stood out starkly against the black of his costume. He was of average height, his build impossible to determine, but his face was narrow, almost sunken. He might have been handsome before being turned, but time and external stress left him fierce-looking, predatory.
I swallowed, careful to look him straight in the nose. “So you’re the big bad?” I said.
“Big bad,” Piotr repeated. “Your colloquialisms are amusing, Marshal. No, I am merely another chess piece on this board set by others, much like yourself. That is why I came.”
“Oh really? Then who set the board?”
“I apologize, I cannot tell you. I am bound to silence by a blood oath. Breaking it would cause . . . harm.”
“Seeing harm come to you is kind of an incentive right now, not a deterrent.”
“You misunderstand. Harm to the one to whom I betray my oath. You.”
The news just kept getting better and better. I took a deep, steadying breath, unnerved by the steady ripples of power flowing off him like a lover’s caress. It was similar to the power I’d sensed in the pentagram room, though more immediate and concentrated. He could kill me without breaking a sweat.
“If you can’t tell me anything, why did you come here?” I asked. “To gloat? To prove how badass you are and tell me to keep my nose out of your business, or you’ll do to me what you did to my friend?”
“I doubt I could do to you what was done to your friend,” he said, speaking slowly, choosing his words. “I sense power in you. It protects your soul from necrotic magic.”
Necrotic—magic that destroys, rots from the inside out. Djinn aren’t inherently good or evil. Like humans, we make conscious choices with our magic and how we use it. Some are affected more strongly by their base—being of earth, water, fire, air, or ice determines many characteristics—but all are free to choose. Unlike demons, who are evil, or vampires, who trend in that direction.
Unless said djinn was bound to a wisher—then our choice was taken away. Had Piotr’s comment about my power protecting me from necrotic magic been a dig or a hint? I needed to find out more about his past so I could put together the puzzle in my present.
“You were a warlock in Russia before you turned,” I said.
He nodded. “Rasputin himself was one of my greatest students. It is unfortunate his reach far exceeded his grasp.”
“So you moved to the States and took up Necromancy for Beginners?”
“The weather here is much more pleasant.”
“You live in Colorado where it snows in April.”
“Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe.” It came across oddly, with his accent.
“You didn�
��t answer my question. Why am I here?”
“To receive an apology.”
I looked away, focusing on a link in the fence, wrestling with my anger. My clenched fist ached. Nails dug into my left palm. I forced myself to look up again, at the tip of his pointed nose. “Did you honestly expect forgiveness?”
“No. However, one must attempt atonement for the worst of wrongs.”
“Isn’t it a little late in your career to worry about your immortal soul? Not that you have one anymore.”
He flinched.
Interesting.
“No, Marshal Harrison, it is not my soul I battle for. It is for the right of my children to exist once I’m gone. I fight for their survival.”
Hell. I’d had a similar conversation with Tennyson yesterday. Him protecting his line by hiding them in a trailer park, surrounded by police protection. His goal had been the same—their survival. Had Piotr been forced to use his knowledge of necromancy in return for the lives of his people? And if so, who was manipulating the vampire Masters so skillfully? The scope of this issue was expanding by the hour.
“You’re being blackmailed?” I asked.
“I cannot answer that question.”
“Are your people in immediate danger?”
“I cannot answer that question.”
Tennyson’s voice roared into my head at the same time I scowled, which covered up the overt agony of it. Do not ask direct questions that he cannot answer. Be indirect.
“Julius was killed and turned into a revenant,” I said slowly, carefully this time, migraine be blessed. “He was returned to us as a warning to not interfere, and as a sign of the power we stand against.”
“The intentions are almost entirely correct.”
There was another reason, then. Asking Piotr directly was an exercise in futility, but knowing it existed made me nervous. So I kept with the more obtuse questions.
“Julius rented the facility in which the spell was performed, that was easy enough for us to discover on our own. He’d been renting it for over a year. Is your knowledge of this the same as mine?”
Piotr cocked his head, considering my phrasing. “My knowledge concurs.”
It didn’t mean he knew Julius last year, just that he knew of the rental—strongly hinting they knew each other. This had been in the works for a frightening length of time. I knew Piotr had the knowledge and skills as a necromancer, but not how long he’d been practicing the dark magic.
“Was Julius your first revenant?”
Indirect! I flinched.
“I cannot answer that question.”
Irritation on the rise, I was less inclined to care what “harm” befell me if he broke his blood oath and just gave me some straight answers. Dancing around the truth was fueling my headache. “One revenant came out of the pentagram room below the storage facility,” I said. He seemed to do better with statements, instead of questions.
“To my knowledge.” A “yes” dangled off the end of Piotr’s answer, which was as good as saying Julius was the only one so far. Unless . . .
“You are the only necromancer capable of such a feat.”
He hesitated, mouth opening and shutting several times. “Uncertain.”
Okay, badly phrased on my part. “Your employer has employed no other capable of necromancy.”
“I cannot respond to that.”
A shiver raced down my spine, sending goose bumps across my shoulders and lower back. The clues started falling into place. Piotr had the knowledge and skill to perform the spell. His line was threatened to ensure his assistance. He specifically mentioned mentoring Rasputin, apprenticing him. Crap.
“You trained a new necromancer who’s loyal to this mystery employer,” I said, as much for Tennyson’s benefit as mine. “Julius was practice.”
Piotr’s jaw tightened. It was as good as a yes.
“And you know who it is.”
More confirming silence.
“Piotr, what exactly is this harm that will befall me if you break your oath?”
Shiloh, don’t—
Shut up, Tennyson!
“I am uncertain,” Piotr replied. “Blood oaths between vampires, if broken, result in the sanctioned death of the one breaking it. My oath was not with a fellow vampire. The consequences shall befall you, and I do not know what they may be.”
“And I bet you can’t tell me what you made the oath with? Sidhe? Witch?”
“I cannot.”
“But it could potentially bring this person down on my doorstep demanding penance for breaking your oath?”
“Possibly. However the price may be extracted remotely via magic.”
“The more likely scenario.”
“Yes.”
This is ill-advised. You have no idea what will happen. You could die.
I didn’t know you cared.
The fate of my people is still in your hands.
I would have laughed if the exchange wasn’t making my head throb like an unpopped zit.
It’s a trick, Tennyson boomed. If the oath maker knows Piotr has broken his promise, what is to stop the oath maker from slaughtering Piotr’s people? Nothing. Piotr has everything to lose by cooperating.
He was right, and I was a fool for not seeing it sooner. One question answered to break his oath, and Piotr’s puppeteer would have me over a barrel. Had Piotr been sent here to trick me into opening myself up for such an attack? Or was his employer testing me?
“You know, you almost had me,” I said. “Bravo, that was well-done.”
“I beg your pardon?” Piotr asked.
“Beg all you want, pal, now go tell your boss she didn’t fall for it.”
The air around Piotr seemed to shift, electrify somehow. He was getting angry. “You are as big a fool as he said.”
“He who?” dangled on the tip of my tongue, but I pulled it back. It was the opening Piotr needed to say he’d broken his oath. Blessed, lying, manipulating vampire bastard. “I’ve been called worse.”
“Undoubtedly, half-breed bitch.”
I bristled. “Say that again.”
He did, with gusto. I raised my right hand and fired, counting on his speedy reflexes. I didn’t want to kill him, so my heart-aimed shot tore a bit of meat from his right shoulder as he jerked out of the way. Blood splatters on the black coat sizzled in the sunlight, then shriveled into pale ash.
Piotr snarled, fangs gleaming. “You will regret this day, djinn.”
“Like I haven’t heard that one before.”
“You will die screaming after you witness the deaths of your comrades.”
“Blah, blah, blah.” Bravado in the face of furious Master vampire screaming death threats—check.
Piotr’s lips drew back in a smile so sinister and full of malice my knees wobbled. Deadly intent was radiating off him. He’d lost and didn’t seem keen on going back to his employer and telling him or her so. Could you get any lower in the vampire world than being outsmarted by a djinn? Probably not. I took a step back from the fence. Our defenses would hold. Even if he got pissed enough to climb the outer fence, he’d be fried into unconsciousness at the inner perimeter. He could try to jump the fence—I’ve seen vampires leap as high as three stories with a good running head start—but our sensors would fry his ass before he hit the ground. We’d sacrificed a lot of robins and seagulls in testing those settings.
The vampire started laughing. Not hysterical, the-bad-guy’s-lost-it laughter, but maniacal, this-is-too-good-not-to-share chuckles. The kind that liquefied my insides and made me want to sit down. Preferably far, far away from him. I couldn’t ask what was so funny. I didn’t dare ask him any more questions.
Ms. Harrison, come back inside, Tennyson said.
Sick of the mental pokes, I thoughtfully retorted, So it’s Ms. Harrison again?
“He’s communicating with you,” Piotr said, that awful laughter still in his voice. “I should have expected it. You don’t hide the agony of his intrusions very well
, girl.”
“Yeah, well, it’s like a jackhammer to the brain, so you’ll have to forgive me the faces.”
“Of course. I am eager to see the faces your friend Vincent makes under similar circumstances.”
Everything slowed down. A chill settled over me, and I began to pant. He was lying. Vincent was safe. No one outside of the team knew where I lived, or who I was dating, including Julius. No. No, no, no, this wasn’t possible.
But he said his name.
My mouth was dry, too dry. I couldn’t seem to find words over the roar in my head.
“You’re lying,” I said, barely above a whisper.
“Am I? Call him.”
My left hand went for my phone and found an empty pocket. I’d left it inside.
“Better yet.” Piotr produced a digital camera, turned it on, then spun it around so the display screen faced me.
I took a step closer to the fence, my hands trembling harder with each passing second. The image mocked me, laughed at me—Vincent strapped to a table not unlike the one we’d found in the pentagram room, naked, eyes wide and staring. Drugged. The digital numbers on the bottom had today’s date, 12:04 a.m.
“You son of a bitch,” I said.
Vincent Ortiz and I had only been dating nine months. The sex was great. He brought me nacho chips and mango salsa instead of roses, because I loved junk food more than flowers. Our dates often consisted of dinner, a DVD, and bed gymnastics, which was the perfect way to relax after long days or weeks of work. We got along well, made each other laugh, and our jobs kept us apart enough to keep the sparks alive.
It wasn’t serious. But I cared about him. He was innocent, and now Piotr had dragged him into my secret life to be used against me. The second person I cared about to be used against me in two days.
Strike that, third person. Tennyson had briefly threatened my mother when we first met. It counted.
“How would you like his head?” Piotr asked. “I was thinking in one of those Iceman coolers, the ones with the reversible lids.”
My gun hand twitched. A silver bullet in the heart wouldn’t kill him, but it would weaken him enough for capture. He’d stay weak until it was removed. Or until I cut off his head. I needed to know where Vincent was. I couldn’t leave him to those monsters. And I couldn’t learn any of that until I got Piotr to break his oath.